Beit Shemesh rally ‘a success’ say protest leaders

Police should be protecting schoolgirls, not us, organizer says.

Organizers of Tuesday night’s anti-extremism rally in Beit Shemesh expressed
satisfaction with the turnout and impact of the protest on Wednesday, welcoming
the media coverage and the participation of senior political
figures.

Estimates vary as to the number of protesters who turned up for
the rally, ranging from several hundred to more than 3,000, as claimed by those
who coordinated the protest.

The protest was called to speak out against
attacks perpetrated by extremists elements from the Beit Shemesh haredi
community against the Orot Bnot elementary girls school, located on the border
between the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Ramat Beit Shemesh Bet and the mixed
neighborhood of Kiryat Sheinfeld.

One of the central organizers was Rabbi
Dov Lipman, who heads the Emergency Committee to Save Beit Shemesh. He said he
was extremely satisfied with the results of the protest regardless of the number
of participants.

The presence of senior politicians including the head of
the opposition, Kadima MK Tzipi Livni, and former Labor party head MK Amir
Peretz, along with a huge media presence meant that the rally achieved its goal
of drawing attention to the issue, Lipman told The Jerusalem
Post.

Lipman, who describes himself as “modern-haredi,” said he had hired
a “top media consultant” to help in getting sufficient media coverage for the
problem.

“The media pressure has been 100 percent effective in bringing
national attention to the issue of radicalization in Beit Shemesh,” he said. “I
believe the issue stands on its own, but in Israel if you want a problem
addressed you need the media.”

Asked whether the campaign had led to
increased tensions in the city, Lipman answered, “100 percent yes.”

“I
feel bad about that,” he admitted, “but we needed to make a difference and
really tackle the problem head on.”

Gidon Yavin, a Beit Shemesh resident
and communications consultant to the haredi world, as he describes himself, said
the activism and media campaign “was very wrong” and that it had backed all
sides into their respective corners.

“Nelson Mandela said you should
always leave your opponent room to maneuver, but this drumming up of media
attention means that now the haredim and the those on the other side of the
issue have no room to maneuver. The situation is now much harder to
resolve,” he said.

Yavin also claimed that the haredi leadership in Beit
Shemesh was not given the opportunity to discuss the situation with the
religious- Zionist and modern-haredi communities, because the leaders from those
neighborhoods said that Mayor Moshe Abutbul of Shas, who is himself haredi, was
biased against them. “They went to war,” Yavin said. “They ignored the
opportunity to discuss possible solutions to solving the tensions and so now
this is where we are.”

One of the main claims of the haredi community in
Beit Shemesh is that the violent and abusive acts carried out against the Orot
Bnot elementary school and its pupils are perpetrated by an extremely small but
criminal minority.

This was refrain was repeated by numerous haredi
residents observing Tuesday night’s demonstration.

Rachel, a married
ultra-Orthodox woman living in Ramat Beit Shemesh Bet, said that the people at
the center of the attacks did not follow any particular rabbi and did not heed
the instructions of senior communal leaders either.

“These are not people
we can control, and we shouldn’t be asked to either,” she said.

“It is
not the responsibility of different communities to control the crazy people in
their midst, it’s the responsibility of the authorities.”

Lipman sees
this as an attempt to shirk responsibility, and argued that if the haredi
community was indeed opposed to the radical fringe, it should publicly join his
struggle, with the kind of poster campaigns that haredi leaders and
organizations deploy for issues they hold dear.

According to Yavin,
haredi leaders have been doing just that. He said that Rabbi Shaia Rosenberger,
one of the leading haredi rabbis in Ramat Beit Shemesh Bet, spoke out in a
public address to his followers against violence and abusive
behavior.

The haredi community in Beit Shemesh also rejects the notion
that there is a process of radicalization within their society, and explains
increasingly stringent approaches to numerous areas of Jewish law as a reaction
to the enticements of modern culture.

The concern of the haredi community
regarding the positioning of the Orot Bnot school, said Yavin, was primarily
over the influences that their children were exposed to when they saw the way
the girls dressed and behaved, Yavin explained.

“For a haredi person, one
of his greatest fears is that his children will adopt a different, less
spiritual way of life,” he said. “If they see other children who don’t dress
like them but are having great fun, it is a path that they may
take.”

According to Yavin, the haredi community feels that its values are
under siege by secular and modern society, which has prompted the current trend
to insulate its children and congregants from the influences of the more modern
and progressive religious- Zionist communities abutting their
neighborhoods.

But the trend, he said, was not a form of
radicalization.

“Halacha is not a set of rigid rules, it changes
according to the reality on the ground. And the reality is that when it becomes
spiritually dangerous to mix genders in the street then the rabbis will rule
against it.

“The haredi community is acting in accordance with the
tradition and rulings of the great rabbis of previous generations in response to
the extreme lack of modesty in the secular world so as to protect themselves,”
Yavin said.

In Lipman’s view, the rabbinical rulings that have led to
gender segregation on public buses and even to some extent in the streets of the
haredi neighborhoods in Beit Shemesh are a complete deviation from the norms of
Jewish law.

“I view this behavior as similar to Reform Judaism,” he said.
“There is no basis anywhere in the Torah for saying where women should walk, for
segregated buses or any of these other similar rulings.”

Lipman is
anxious to point out that his campaign is not in anyway anti-haredi, but is
simply focused on the safety and well-being of the Orot Bnot pupils. He said,
however, that “broader radicalization” in Israeli society was a major concern
and described himself as a “card carrying member” of MK Haim Amsalem’s Am Shalem
movement who hopes to run for Knesset.

“We’re against extremism and what
we want is for the haredi community to be active participants in stopping this
phenomenon,” he said. “We saw that the abuse against the school was starting up
again, and so we initiated this campaign in order to stop it. Last year we were
the ones who had to protect the girls and it shouldn’t be us, it should be the
police. That is what we are trying to achieve here.”

Sites Of Interest

The Jerusalem Post Customer Service Center can be contacted with any questions or requests:
Telephone: *2421 * Extension 4 Jerusalem Post or 03-7619056 Fax: 03-5613699E-mail: [email protected]
The center is staffed and provides answers on Sundays through Thursdays between 07:00 and 14:00 and Fridays only handles distribution requests between 7:00 and
13:00
For international customers: The center is staffed and provides answers on Sundays through Thursdays between 7AM and 6PM
Toll Free number in Israel only 1-800-574-574
Telephone +972-3-761-9056
Fax: 972-3-561-3699
E-mail: [email protected]